This week has been hard and I want to mope here.
I think it would be a good idea to put on a production of Romeo and Juliet with cats and dogs. Not cats and dogs as the actors - that would be stupid. The actors would be normal human actors. But each one would have with them, on a lead, a cat or a dog. Dogs for Montagues, cats for Capulets. Neutral characters like Friar Laurence and the Prince could have guinea pigs or something. The characters would at no point acknowledge the existence of the animals, except that in the ball scene Romeo and Mercutio would have to disguise their dogs as cats. Nor would the animals be trained in any way. They would simply roam around the stage doing their thing, chasing each other etc.
This would explain why Romeo stays in the garden during the balcony scene, instead of climbing up to the balcony: dogs can't climb.
Possibly the animals could be released from their leads during fight scenes.
2: I like that idea. Although I'm not sure the guinea pigs would survive the run of the production.
It's more likely that Disney would make an animated version with the Montagues as dogs and Capulets as cats. But my stepdaughter would say that Disney already has made an animated Romeo and Juliet - Lion King 2, Simba's Pride.
I had a vaguely similar idea for a production of Waiting for Godot -- Vladimir and Estragon play Hacky Sack for the entire length of the play. When Lucky and Pozzo show up they join in the game. Of course, no one would talk about it as they would stay true to Beckett's dialogue.
5.1 is a good point. How about miniature horses? Falabellas, I think they're called.
A Falabella for the Prince, Vietnamese pot bellied pig for Friar Laurence.
No beach today with Pola, alas, (next Friday, which will be her last time) so I just slept the day away...
Good news: pod-school third grade seems to be going well!
Bad news: I'm doing all the drop-offs and pick-ups because my wife's urban-driving phobia kicks into high gear in their neighborhood and we're still worried about the safety of riding the bus.
I'm not afraid of urban driving, but the Chesapeake Bay scares me. Everytime I drive it, I'm mostly saying Hail Marys as I go.
10:. You're not supposed to drive in the water.
We're wrapping up our first week of k-12 with the Giblets and Jammies (although my 3rd week of my own semester.)
I have that sense of vertigo that I haven't felt since March: how long exactly are we going to be able to do this? This is day 4 of 180? It's basically going okay, but I have grave reservations about our ability to keep this momentum going as the weeks start to drag.
We do have a care-taker. She comes for 3 hours a day. While she's here, it's really great. When she's not, it's hit and miss.
The fires on the west coast are causing me a lot of worry.
I feel bad that so many commenters have left since 2012. I suppose this is because either I'm failing to aggressively ban people or being insufficiently charming on the front page.
I do love and appreciate the commenters we've gained since then, though. You guys are wonderful.
My indefatigable sense of optimism isn't kicking in the way it usually does. Civilization is just going to crumble, because even if Biden is elected and we come up with a large scale cooperative plan to fight climate change, the memories of the people who cooperated will start to fail, and it will not last for any real length of time, and then it will be even worse. We're not going to be okay.
I think Facebook is taking commenters, not other commenters unbanned.
Alive and well; the break in temperature the last few days has been great. Yesterday's high was only in the 80s, and today's is only supposed to be 93. The sky is smoky, but I'm opening my windows in the morning for the cool breeze. And the AC isn't having to work as hard, even if the filters need more frequent changing.
13.5: Neither of those seems responsible to me. The big thing seems to be that social media has gotten better at being a time suck, which leaves less time to waste here. The same thing has hit most blogs everywhere. This community has outlasted several cycles of ordinary online communities, several roleplaying editions and design community upheavals... basically, however you measure it, this seems like an extraordinary lifespan for a social thing.
13.last: I suspect that we're going to fail climate change but civilization won't crumble; the resulting displacement and new struggles will be challenges that sap what should have been tremendous progress (technological, social, etc.), but even if it involves backsliding on some fronts, I don't (currently) feel like it's game over. If Trump wins this year, it feels likely that many good things are at risk, and all of the costs will sap much more improvement than a Biden world, but many of us will still be able to enjoy our lives in the degraded world that remains.
Rachel Bitecofer had a sober twitter thread yesterday, basically concluding that you can see from Republican behavior this week that democracy has already failed.
Today I see that we shouldn't be calling this wildfire season in California 'the new normal' because the actual new normal is going to be worse.
I know it's a really tired cliche, but just spend half a minute thinking abut what would have happened if the Obama Administration had done this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/ice-air-farmville-protests-covid/2020/09/11/f70ebe1e-e861-11ea-bc79-834454439a44_story.html
Naturally, I blame Ralph Nader and everyone who thought it would be fun to teach the DNC Al Gore (and I guess Bill Clinton, and that shrew wife of his) the whole fucking world a big lesson.
13: 16.2 is correct. It's remarkable that Unfogged continues to survive as a (somewhat?) vibrant community, and you, heebie, deserve a lot of the credit for this.
That one is a lesson in don't try to predict the story from the URL.
13: You're also the only one being charming on the front page at all! The rest of the FPP are a completely worthless bunch of losers.
HG, you really are doing an excellent job with this.
Seconding 22.
I'm not on FB, this place is a lifeline for me.
13: When I'm overcome with doom and gloom I remind myself that I will probably die before it gets that bad. Or at least that I will be spared the worst since it's bound to just get worse and worse.
Or if I'm feeling more positive, I remind myself that in the 1980s I frequently thought that some kind of nuclear war between the US and USSR was inevitable. And in the 2000s I occasionally thought a terrorist nuclear weapon attack seemed more likely than not at times.
And then I'm reminded of Talking World War 3 Blues -- see, since everyone is so sure that doom is assured that's proof that it's not going to happen, because all the people can't be right all the time.
On a local material-conditions level our lives have been shockingly good the last few years, and especially since 2016 I've so often had a feeling of unreality walking and driving around the prosperous, flourishing Bay Area (people in tents excepted), waiting for the other shoe to drop. I would say this month feels like the circle closing a bit, except that as Charley says there is no new normal, just an escalator going down.
Unlike nuclear war, climate disaster doesn't require anyone at all to make affirmative decisions; people just have to keep calm and carry on as they are. The only thing that seems positive lately is the cratering price of oil making some known deposits economically unrecoverable at present. More of that please?
Unrelated to absolutely anything, my novel got an unexpected bit of local recognition and there's a Zoom ceremony this weekend. It's really minor in the wide world of literary awards, but it did give me some encouragement for trying to start the next one while the sky is orange.
Heebie, I think that a lot of the drop off is people growing old, or up and weighing the costs of social media generally. Some of them - Halford, eg - seem to have reached the conclusion that even here the cost of being snarky and brilliant was too great, I suppose in the energy it sucked from the rest of life.
Children take time.
Some of our arguments grow stale.
FB takes over some of the diary function; twitter some of the showoff and adrenaline pulse.
There is no longer very much face to face interaction, as far as I can tell, and that really nourishes a community. But you have done a really good job.
We still try to be thoughtful as well as clever, and to struggle against dispiritedness.
Well done with the novel, Lourdes
Technically, that means your resignation
This phone is shit.
Technically, that means your recognition is no longer local.
Ume and I have had a date for our house purchase. October the first. Christ. There will be some weeks of nomadic existence while the floors, windows, roof, and other minor details are fixed up.
I need to find a retired front line politician to do a zoom with by Thursday morning.
I think people have left since 2012 because of natural attrition combined with the rise of social media more than because of actual problems with the blog - some people are going to leave anyway and social media means fewer are going to find their way here. I know that Natilo and I both arrived because we saw the Fuck You Clown thread linked somewhere else but I feel like the whole blogular ecosystem has changed so much that we'd never find our way here now.
Man, I miss how much I enjoyed the internet back then. By~2014 a lot of my internet interactions were tumbr-ified and basically guilt-driven (that was an incredibly fucked up scene!) and then since 2016 everything has been terrible and very little has really delighted me the same way. But 2007-2010 or so, that was my pre-fall internet.
Also I miss SEK, don't you?
32: It was great. So much love for John Edwards!
32: Same. Being able to find and join in with interesting conversations even if you didn't know the people was so terrific, and that's gone now. This place is fading naturally, and while it may last quite a while longer, I'll miss it a whole lot when it's finally gone.
Don't remind me about John Edwards. I was all in for him.
Air quality update. We'll be getting that west coast smoke over the weekend and into next week. We've got a gang together for a Sunday morning river trip -- have to see whether we can breathe.
Joining in all the praise for HG and this community. There are many people I miss and hope drop in again, but I also think one of the nice things about the conversation moving a little more slowly is that it easier for people to mostly lurk and comment when they have time.
And then I'm reminded of Talking World War 3 Blues -- see, since everyone is so sure that doom is assured that's proof that it's not going to happen, because all the people can't be right all the time.
I think about "Outside In"
Did you ever stop to notice,
It's when you feel a little low,
That the entire spinning universe
Descends to say hello
With heavy-handed cheerfulness
And a calculated smile and says,
"carry me awhile."
...
I know that you think worry is your ever-faithful friend,
Cuz nothin' that you worry over ever happens in the end.
And there might be somethin' to it,
But it sure gets in the way of fun today.
32. God, do we need SEK at this hour!
24. Barry, I first encountered you on Jamie Kenny's blog, Which I miss a lot. But Jamie has gone entirely onto Twitter, so he is dead to me.
32. God, do we need SEK at this hour!
24. Barry, I first encountered you on Jamie Kenny's blog, Which I miss a lot. But Jamie has gone entirely onto Twitter, so he is dead to me.
35: Me too. Though not as much as I love Warren. Even though it's slower, I'm glad to have this place now, especially during COVID. I'm not a Facebook fan though.
Thanks you guys - I really appreciate it. I didn't mean to be asking for positive feedback, but it's nice to read.
Man, I miss how much I enjoyed the internet back then.
I agree with this up to a point, I think. I get that Twitter spats are incredibly unpleasant for the people who get into them, but at least the platform forces you to be (compulsively, serially) concise, whereas I think the massive arguments the blogosphere facilitates were a lot more stressful for me to read and, very occasionally, take part in. Of course, a lot of that was the Valve, and the Valve was cursed. But I really, really, really do not miss that sense that you had to be equipped to go at it for paragraphs and paragraphs for multiple days to do some stupid fucking online argument justice.
I was just thinking this morning (highly unoriginal thought alert) of how much we take ephemerality for granted now -- people always say that Dorothy Parker would be great on Twitter and shit like that, but no one will have the faintest idea in 2038 what bons mots went around and got 63,000 favorites in 2018. We've had this standard of cultural literacy -- where people quote, say, Voltaire or Oscar Wilde decades or centuries on -- that isn't sustainable now, even in meme form. (Is any meme actually going to last 30 years? 10 years?) It's elegant to think that this ephemerality keeps pace with climate catastrophe, with everything getting burned up and spit out faster and faster. But this century's wit is going to be lost.
This is an ironically dimwitted comment, but I guess I'll post it since nothing matters at all! Whee!
|| Eleventh Circuit has overturned the ruling that would have allowed Florida felons to vote notwithstanding unpaid fines and costs. 6-4 vote -- 5 of the 6 were Trump appointees. (The sixth, W Pryor, had been filibustered during the GWB presidency, but was allowed in as part of the gang of 14 deal.) Obviously Bloomberg should pay the outstanding amounts, but there's a problem: Florida can't even say what each person owes. Is this beyond fucked up? Yes it is. |>
|| . . . the dissent noted that Florida couldn't even say what the 17 named plaintiffs owe, much less the hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised former felons. |>
I wanted to join everyone in reassuring heebie after reading 13. Of course, heebie's blog stewardship has been exemplary.
The rest of 13 is about right, though.
I predict, however, that the apocalypse will at least spare the cockroaches and Unfogged.
42: Twitter is certainly funnier than the blogosphere in general (although not necessarily funnier than Unfogged at its better moments).
But the thing of twitter is that you can never, ever tease out a complicated idea - even a thread isn't very good at this. People just bon mot themselves into picking sides and it gets dumb and boring.
I was thinking about this today because in addition to the fires and doom there's some twitter controversy where someone said, basically, "If you're going to be closeted, don't write a bunch of YA about queer characters because you're going to write unrealistic stories; if you want to write about queer people, come out, be queer and then write". And so now we're on this whole "how very DARE anyone limit what closeted writers can do" tip I guess, but the point is, there's a whole lot of queer YA out there written by straight women or closeted bisexual women, often about young gay men, and a lot of it is kind of weird. Writing about queer people as a closeted person puts you in a funny space. Does this mean that closeted people can't write about queer characters? Or that straight or bi women can't write YA about young gay men? Of course not, but you get a lot of odd purportedly-realistic fiction when it's written about queer people by closeted queer people, and there are a lot of weird microgenres out there that I think are not in fact politically awesome, but we can't really talk about that on twitter because the thing of twitter is that we should all dunk on the other side for points.
Brevity may be the soul of wit but it sure isn't the soul of parsing out complicated ideas.
Right. It's specifically bad for arguing the way I like to argue. I don't know if I ever convince anyone of much, but what I want out of an argument is to pin down exactly what the person I'm disagreeing with believes, and on what basis. On Twitter, you absolutely can't do that.
And not even someone I'm disagreeing with, necessarily -- it can be just someone who's said something interesting that I don't completely understand, or have enough basis to evaluate. Getting people to explain themselves fully is most of what I like on the internet, and twitter's useless for it.
Terrific for doomscrolling, though.
If anyone does manage to have sex with a dinosaur, Chuck Tingle is going to have a time of it on Twitter.
I've gotten pretty good value from being wrong on the Internet, but that value only comes from being corrected by people engaging in good faith. IMO, that was way thinner than people wanted to think in the golden age of blogging, and I don't think I have any reason at all to have my twitter settings unlocked from where they are even a little.
I still like twitter a lot, but that depends on the curation. I've sometimes let people stay in the feed for too long, but then, when I eventually cut them loose, the improvement is material.
And really, FB can be a pretty good outlet. Thinking of one of our lost sheep -- whose birthday it is today! -- who seems as ready to engage in intelligent discussion there as 10-15 years ago here. This is pretty common.
FB is great for people you already know, but not for finding new people. Also, bringing about the apocalypse, I understand.
Our corporate masters are at it again -- being good citizens in a time of government breakdown. The DOJ won't look into foreign manipulation of US elections, but Microsoft is keeping an eye out.
As I think I've explained, I don't have a Twitter account, I just passively consume individual feeds like blogs by typing "twitter.com/favoritejournalist" into the browser's address bar. It's entirely voyeuristic and it does seem to provide some of the passive-entertainment function that blogs once had. I have almost no idea what it's like to participate, but people seem unanimous on its shittiness, so I just parasitize the good stuff.
OTOH, as far as stress and arguments: honestly, I may just be on better drugs now than I was in 2007. The drugs will never be good enough to convince me that I can't substantially improve Unfogged by commenting less.
43: Still, people are donating to pay the unknowable, unpayable fines. (I think I saw this go around earlier this year or late last year, not sure.)
That belief is your only flaw as a commenter.
Noooo stop stop stop all this talk about the decline and fall of Unfogged! I just got here, practically.
I was reading Darb's blog when he dropped some comment from here and linked it (thank you Darb!) and I clicked and was transported to this world and I was very quiet so I didn't get kicked out and I didn't even tell my closest friends about it except in the abstract because I didn't want to mess this thing up.
It's funny that someone brought up Dorothy Parker because one of my early thoughts was "I have a seat at the Algonquin round table."
It definitely would be fun if there were an in-person component to this experience, but sigh.
Keep on keeping on, Heebie and all you regulars. There are other blogs with lots of front page content, but istm none of the comment sections any more are worth anything. Except here.
I have never sampled Twitter enough to understand why anyone with any goddam sense would involve themselves with it at all, but I recently developed a theory that the advantage of Twitter is that you can address people who are otherwise out of reach. You can directly tell Donald Trump what a fuckhead he is, or say hi to Kim Kardashian. Likewise, you can speak to the entire world in a way you can't on a blog any more.
You get very little of that on Facebook (though I'm actually Facebook friends with a nonfiction author I don't know in real life but admire a lot) and I only know who a few of the celebrities are on Unfogged.
But yeah, I am a dinosaur from the Ancient Age of Blogs, interested in developing a discussion at length and not really fit for the modern world.
There used to be more painful puns. People should do that more often.
That was all you and Stanley, no? I approve and appreciate, but I mostly can't do that kind of thing myself.
There were lots and lots of people.
I am regularly grateful for the stupidity of Moby's phone. If I've gotten a decent amount of sleep and my time zone somehow overlaps with commenting time, I can sometimes pun along.
I get a lot out of twitter, and I think that's from three rules:
1. It's not on my phone;
2. Curate without mercy; and
3. Don't worry about missing anything during the time I was away.
Working journalists (which I am not anymore) kinda have to use it in contravention of those rules, so I can see why they carp. In addition to general journalistic carpiness.
Did Mossy just wander off? I seem to have missed that.
Heebie, you do a great job with the front page! I should thank you more often.
On more general grounds for optimism, the market is killing coal power generation. This is a Big Biden Deal. Somewhere I have a link to a piece from like 2014 or 2015 that argued as follows: some time back (2010 or so, I believe) Chinese leadership wanted to know whether solar costs could go below coal. They didn't have to actually reach that point yet, just figure out if it could be done. So they totted up the costs of figuring out and it turned out to be on the order of $10B. Which is a lot of money to you and me, but on the scale of planning China's power plant construction over the next several decades is silly cheap. You don't have to guess what the answer was, because it's showing up in the dearth of new coal plant construction and the actually falling demand for coal. More than coal, though, renewables accounted for nearly half of the UK's power generation in the first quarter of 2020 (most recent number I have seen in 28.5 seconds of googling).
Anyway, my blogging habit will soon be old enough to vote, and my Unfogged habit is practically old enough to drive, so I am glad for this place, even if my offset of several time zones means I'm out of the flow a lot.
As I think I've explained, I don't have a Twitter account, I just passively consume individual feeds like blogs by typing "twitter.com/favoritejournalist" into the browser's address bar. It's entirely voyeuristic and it does seem to provide some of the passive-entertainment function that blogs once had. I have almost no idea what it's like to participate, but people seem unanimous on its shittiness, so I just parasitize the good stuff.
Ha, I do the exact same thing. As unappealing as the Twitter participation experience sounds, there's no question that a lot of the interesting content that used to be on blogs is there now so I've had to find a way to access it with as little engagement as possible.
That said, I've recently been thinking I will have to bite the bullet and actually join Twitter at some point, if only to provide a platform for promoting my blog posts. The series I'm working on about epidemics and Native American depopulation is really interesting stuff and I'd like to try to get it out there more than I've been able to in the past.
You can borrow "Moby Hick" if you promise not to embarrass me.
Much love to Heebie for keeping this alive and doing a great job.
I looked for a suitable kitten-themed gif, gave up, but now I see that it's easy: https://www.flickr.com/photos/novavelle/14600010805/
I miss Buttercup. I have been thinking of her lately for a couple of different reasons...
...one of which is the fire emergency in Oregon, which you all are following, right? This is truly the stuff of fucking nightmares: the chaotic misinformation, noncompliance, and political tinderbox we have come to know via the pandemic, plus California-level conflagration next to a major city. Times has updates.
OMG is 57 correct.
58 Many of us have met IRL, which, I think, along with the unflagging dedication of HG, accounts for the longevity of this community. It certainly helps with the good faith.
64.65 -- Honestly, you don't have to engage any more than you are right now. You can have privacy settings that make you more or less invisible to the general public, and whether you ever want to post so that the few people who even know of your account (which you can control, like FB) it's easy enough. The point of having a curated account is that you get to see what X is thinking about, and if X retweets something interesting from Y, you can have a look and see if Y is consistently interesting. Public figures keep their profiles open, so you can pick up and drop whoever as the mood strikes.
The blogosphere and Twitter are alike in that they were both more fun when I used to drink more.
Twitter isn't fun for me even drunk.
60, 61: NO.
I've been surprised at how much Twitter has become a personal community for the dozen or so people I interact with regularly. I see them talking to each other and am fairly sure that they wouldn't have known of the other but for my feed. But those folks are all fairly regional and show up as people, so once they're at the same place there's no reason they wouldn't get to talking. None of us have large accounts.
Right, right. Now I remember who it pissed off.
Now I'm not saying she's a gold digger,
But she's not getting rolled in a carpet for a mere vicar.
I just found out a cousin's kid has Covid. Quarantined in a frat house at a large land-grant university.
72: The missing ingredient is Eurovision.
39 I miss B&T too. Jamie's twitter feed is good but it isn't a patch on the community that was that blog.
Mossy emailed me only yesterday, I should ask him to come back or why he isn't around lately.
55 I used to do the same thing on twitter for years before I made an account.
I miss SEK too.
Coming late to this thread, but I just want to second everyone who has said that Heebie has been doing a great job at keeping the blog going.
I hate all social media with a fiery passion and am convinced that twitter has done incalculable damage to culture in general and the media/journalism landscape in particular.
Unfogged has been an island of sanity.
In nine and a bit years these KIT posts will be closing in on a thousand and everybody will get excited about it and that will be the new normal
Do political campaigns know your religion or are the just making educated guesses.
I hate all social media with a fiery passion and am convinced that twitter has done incalculable damage to culture in general and the media/journalism landscape in particular.
Maybe, but Facebook has done way more damage.
83:. I think they must, because why else would I have gotten a mailing from Satanists for Biden.
Their rebranding as the Lincoln Project was months ago, peep.
84. Facebook appears to be about to get into a big legal spat with the Australian government over a move to make them pay for links to news sites. I'm going to have to read the story again to work out exactly what is going on but if it ends up with Zuckerberg and Murdoch knocking lumps off each other it might be quite amusing.
83, 85, 86 are fantastic.
Also (re: 86): https://mobile.twitter.com/heerjeet/status/1291447650521214977
I too don't have a Twitter account, and occasionally browse people's feeds by going directly to the URL.
88: If Biden printed those up and sold them, I would send him more money.
Somebody on my street just put up a "Riding with Biden" sign.
Also, there's now one house with Trump signs, a first this year. There were several in 2016.
92: there's one house with 2 Trump tarp signs. They are hanging over the side of the house. They were lower before and got replaced with newer ones, so I wonder if someone took them down.
My liberal-ish town had a support the blue pro-cop rally which the radio station described as "mostly older white men" which was met by a bunch of black lives matter protesters. I don't think there are a ton of Trump supporters, but I think this America backs Blue Group is kind of Trumpy.
There was a Trump rally in the middle of the Concord Rotary* the other day. This rotary is a death trap even without putting amateur entertainment in the middle of it. The photo in the local paper showed about five people attended.
* Right next to the Concord Prison, once the temporary home of Malcolm X.
If anyone hears from Buttercup, please say hi from me. I miss her too.
I believe my father-in-law once totaled a car at that rotary.
The photo in the local paper showed about five people attended.
This drives me nuts. Last year we had 50 people come out in the snow to support impeachment, and got nothing in the paper. But if a half-dozen dudes from out of town show up to protest against masks, they get their picture on the front page.
96: I've wanted to drive into an Elks Lodge.
Comment largely deleted on account of everyone else said it already.People age and blogs age and people get tired of each other's takes and jokes and conversational tics and I think it's a wonder this thing is still around and it's due entirely to Heebie being a game and engaging host. I think a degree of attrition was absolutely inevitable.
God I hate Twitter. I had an account and killed it because Twitter was so bewilderingly stupid and then got another a year ago and used it a lot for a month or two until today when I killed it again. It's designed to make conversation worse and has done a lot to make the world stupider and meaner. I feel this weirdly visceral antipathy toward it.
I was discussing Twitter with Bave and he uses it differently than I do (did!) and does not find it misery-inducing. But also brought up one of the things that makes me sad about it, the way a thing will happen in the news and everyone just absolutely KILLS themselves to make the joke about it that will get retweeted and there are these absolutely formulaic tropes in 98% of them.
No one:
Me: I hate twitter.
That's my idea of what passes for a joke on twitter. Other than the one about Elliot Gould and Grover on TV guide which still makes me laugh.
97. In MA, supporting impeachment or otherwise protesting Trump is a "dog bites man" story. Supporting Trump is a "man bites dog" story.
We love you heebie
Oh yes we do
We don't love anyone
As much as you
When you're not posting
We're marginally more productive but lacking a sense of community
Oh heebie we love you
Ok that made me laugh out loud.
Also it almost scans like my high school alma mater, which was impressively written to be a-tunal and a-rhythmic and discordant.
Anyone who doesn't leave at least ten comments a week here is objectively pro-Facebook.
Anyway, the second picture is just down the street from me. It's one of only two places I've been to for a drink since this started.
Just wanted to say that I am only academic adjaceent, but have lurked here for years and I really appreciate the community and hope it doesn't go away.
Nine left. Week runs Monday to Sunday, Mountain Time.
109 Stick around and comment from time to time, scribbler. Who has the fruit basket?
Is there a perception that the audience here is mostly academics?
There's a lot of academics, especially if you include ex-academics and academic-adjacent jobs, but surely there's at least as many lawyers and engineers.
I think the most of the people who claim to be piano players in a brothel are actually lawyers too.
And probably some of the 'lawyers' are sociologists.
And thanks, scribbs and all.
I enjoy this routine here far too much to ever contemplate calling it quits for a long, long time.
Sorry. To be more precise I should have said academic and law adjacent.
My attempt to popularize "subaltern bar" failed miserably.
118: Now I'm wondering what you do for a living. If we've got a wilderness survival guide/barista/industrial chemist reading/whatever it could be handy if we've got questions.
Every once in a while I try to figure out how long I've been reading here. I remember commenting during my PhD (drunken conversation about Auburn) which means it's been at least 8 years. But I definitely read long before I commented How did I even find this place?
You guys and Metafiler are still my favourite places in the internet. I basically always have links to both sites open. Plus the text only format really suits my habits.
Twitter was bad for my mental health, Facebook is boring and filled with my relatives, Instagram is great for pictures (and lacks words which it turns out I do enjoy?) but more family is joining so is pretty professional. I like my semi-anonymous, text-based platforms. Thanks Heebie et al!
I do regrets missing both the Unfoggecons (there were 2 right?).
122: 3. One, then one a year later, then a 10 year one.
I think I found blogs via Christopher Lydon's Open Source. I'd been a big fan of his radio show in the 90's. And maybe I found unfogged from a link from Brad Delong.
I believe I discovered unfogged through Crooked Timber's blogroll (almost never read CT anymore, and I still miss The Valve).
That might have been how I got here too. I got started commenting advising Ogged to date welders.
I found blogs in general from an article in the Groan which listed "10 best" as these things do. One of those was C***s B*****m's solo blog which I followed because i. it was good, and ii. I had known CB some time before IRL.
I followed him to CT, which was a lot brighter in its early days,, and more or less used its blogroll as a reading list for a little while, finding this place from it. Then I lurked for a couple of years before starting to comment under s pseud which I dumped when I got bored with it. I hardly ever read CT now; I probably should.
I just saw an 8-point buck in the park. I don't think I've seen a deer looking that strong in the city before.
Got my nuts cut this last Friday. I may never have been hornier. This stinks.
Your vas deferens was holding you back.
It's like there's a conspiracy! Dreams were... unhelpful; in real life my hottest neighbors are parading around in exercise gear. I'm an antifeminist asshole, I guess, but at least the movement of my testes is frankly uncomfortable.
Plus, I bet the cone isn't helping.
Further to 26: holy shit, lourdes' book won the award. We are stunned.
Oh, I guess it wasn't clear: the "local recognition" was nomination for an award, not the award itself. But now it is also the award itself.
Now I'm wondering what you do for a living. If we've got a wilderness survival guide/barista/industrial chemist reading/whatever it could be handy if we've got questions.
Hurtful, LB!
126: I liked that pseud! I thought you dropped it when you retired.
135: You're an industrial chemist? I thought it must be something like that but didn't know exactly.
132: Congratulations! I really liked it.
Just wanted to say that I am only academic adjaceent, but have lurked here for years and I really appreciate the community and hope it doesn't go away.
Being a long-time lurker, I agree so much. Thank you, Heebie.
This is a refreshing change of pace from the doom to which I feel called to bear witness on twitter. It's a nice callback to the halcyon age of blogs. For the casual lurker/commenter like myself, it's like pleasantly skimming the newspaper in a crowded coffeeshop (sob) while half listening to a group of irascible irregulars.
140: Not exactly, depends a bit how you'd define "chemical industry" - there are a few big chemical industries - pharma, petrochemical, and materials (semiconductors, frex). I don't want to be too identifying as far as my employer, but I'm in a very quirky subfield in pharma. I'm mostly teasing since I don't think we have anyone in materials or petrochemical, which might be more what you are thinking of.
I'll third and fourth the thank you to Heebie. For what it's worth, I was a highly academic high schooler who read Darb's blog every day from 2005-2007 and have lurked this blog and occasionally posted since 2012, started as an economics major at a highly ranked liberal arts college, and am now a project manager at transportation engineering firm. It sucks. IMO, Unfogged is the perfect hybrid of the kindness and good faith of Metafilter and the transgression and argumentativeness of Something Awful at peak.
128, 130: Shouldn't you be signing as Warren G. Hardon?
Fontana Labs. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
Somehow I seem to have missed Lourdes book. Can somebody send me a link to the address in the sig.
Been lurko-commenting sporadically for over a decade now, and am really glad that this place (still) exists - thanks for keeping it going, heebie.
Let me be the first to praise and congratulate heebie on the magnificent and charming job she does keeping unfogged going.
I came here sometime around the penis-stretching thread but after the origin of WMYBSALB, participated strongly for a few years and then slacked off in part because I got pulled into FB and later Twitter, partly because life got in the way, partly because I miss the friends who were so active for a while and then disappeared into occasional FB posts, and most recently because my job kicks my ass and I can't look when working.
But I really, really appreciate that this place is still here--it's my online home even if I don't visit much and there are new people who may not even know I used to comment. It feels good knowing it's here, Heebie--thank you for shepherding the life of the blog forward to new commenters.
I was just looking over a couple of threads that a Jesus McQ had posted in and sa2 a couple of names that I hadn't seen in a while - My Alter Ego and togolosh. It wasn't so long ago that togolosh commented, and I remember there were some issues with funding for his job at some point, so I'm wondering if anyone has heard from him. I'd love to know how MAE is doing, but I'm actually worried about togolosh. Has anyone heard from him?
Echoing what Chopper said in 153, except I couldn't tell you at this point when it was I first found my way here. Somewhere around 2005, 2006? I do recall finding my way here via BitchPhD's blog.
Facebook and Twitter undoubtedly played some role in my drifting away, but also getting my ADHD diagnosed and treated has meant I have been better able to focus on my work and am less prone to losing hours lost in distraction. I have always been glad this place is still around though, that I can pop back in from time to time, even if just to lurk.
Life has been good. Rory is living in Seattle after graduating UW. Currently figuring out grad school applications. (If there are any physicists in this crowd who have advice, feel free to bombard me!) I am living with my special man friend, our dog, and my cat. I love them all equally.
129: I am a little disappointed, Moby, that after complaining about the decline in punnery, you didn't say, "Sounds like the surgery made a vas deferens."
155. Nice to see you here again. Which physics is she interested in?
152 seconded.
I can't remember when I found this place. I've mostly left I guess, It sporadically visit for a few weeks, and occasionally lurk. I'm always happy it's still here.
I seem to remember finding some of you on FB when I used to go there, was there a group? At any rate it's nice to check in once in a while but I doubt I have much to contribute.
Fun fact--i went back into TFA to see if I could find my first comments and stumbled across a 2006 SomeCallMeTim comment calling "Becks, Tia, LB, w-lfs-n, Apostropher" the "new crop of commenters." It's hard to remember Cronus and Rhea when Zeus and Hera are fading into myth.
Up at 3 am here for probably my last walk with Pola before she leaves next week. JFC the humidity is at +70% but it'll be worth it.
157: Ok, this will be a test of how well I listen... Theoretical, not experimental. Does "quantum and field theory" sound like a real thing?
There's quantum field theory, which involves fucking with cats in boxes.
There's quantum field theory, which involves fucking with cats in boxes.
But only theoretically, not experimentally.
Yes, we've all had the ASPCA visit.
And back again, 4.4 miles and the weather wasn't too bad. Didn't see our buddies, the pipefish at their usual corner of the marina but did see some fairly large teiras. This was likely our last walk there together. Sadness.
Solidarity, Barry. Fingers crossed for Canada, and if not ... light out for Poland! Surely you need a good five months of dark and dreary as a cure for the Arrakis blues.
I still think it's hard to hide deaths for long, but that doesn't mean political actors can't manipulate the other stats. For example, Texas.